


Winter Melting

by scarletbegonias37



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-27 19:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18745726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletbegonias37/pseuds/scarletbegonias37
Summary: Gendry has messed it up with the love of his life, and hopes to fix it before it's too late.





	1. The Night After

She was gone. _Gone_. The Hound was gone too, and it was hard for Gendry to say if that made him feel better or worse. If she was still the Arya that he’d known as a child, he’d be grateful to know that she had a big brute protector along the road.

The Arya that existed now – Arya fucking Stark, the savior of the realm, slayer of the Night’s King, bringer of the Dawn – clearly needed no protection at all, from anyone. Still, if he’d really wanted to keep her safe, he should have kept his big fat fumbling mouth shut.

Gendry had never been good at words or expressing his feelings. He’d never had much call for it; no one was interested. And they’d called him “The Bull” around the blacksmith’s shop in King’s Landing for a reason; he was prone to knocking into things, his limbs flailing, and his steps were heavy and lumbering.

Not a good quality to possess when you happened to be having an affair with the sister of the King.

He’d lain awake for the few remaining hours of that night, tossing and turning on the bed of soft grain and cloth that – up until two days ago – had seemed so comfortable, relative to most he’d had in his life. Now, despite the fact that it was shored up against the warm forge wall and the floor heated by hot springs, it felt oddly cold and empty.

He tortured himself about how he should sneak upstairs and apologize, abjectly, for the extremely stupid proposition he’d given to Arya earlier. Nobody ever told you – since no one had had this experience before in known history – that killing a hundred or more wights, and living through a battle with the dead that nobody expected to survive, filled you with such shock and adrenaline that you might do something so foolish as to blurt out to the world’s most incredible woman that you were madly in love with her and wondered if she might be willing to settle down in some boring castle and have a passel of your babies, instead of being what she obviously was – the greatest assassin who’d ever lived.

What a fucking idiot you are, Gendry Waters Baratheon Whatever You Want To Call Yourself, he cursed himself in the dark.

He certainly couldn’t let this misunderstanding lie. He had to find her. But the way was dark and treacherous.

He could sneak past Jon Snow’s chambers, which would be a miracle. Jon was a bastard himself, and wouldn’t hold that mark against Gendry. And Gendry had been legitimized tonight, so there were no worries in that regard anymore. But – that didn’t change the fact that, out of all of Jon’s siblings, he worshiped his little dark wolf sister the most, and he’d not hesitate to take a sharp blade to the throat of any man who was sneaking down the royal hall chambers prior to a wedding ceremony.

And furthermore – Jon was with Danaerys Targaryen now, who intended to rule, and she’d be the one approving royal or noble marriages soon enough. Soon enough, indeed, there’d be talk of rebuilding houses and cementing alliances, and Gendry had nothing to bring to that table, title or not.

If he made it past that quarter, there was Bran’s door – not that that would change anything. Bran saw everything, past and future, apparently, though he expressed it only in odd, poetic, vague phrases. At least Gendry could be reasonably certain that Bran wouldn’t spout out bluntly “she’s fucking the blacksmith” in casual dinner conversation. Only reasonably certain, though. You could never tell with Bran.

The same couldn’t be said for the Lady Stark, whose chambers were the final gauntlet before he could reach Arya’s. Gendry wasn’t sure she’d ever taken notice of him at all, to be honest. She’d never spared him a glance, and he didn’t know much about her, other than that she didn’t seem to like men much in general (fair, given what he knew of her history), and that she had a highly refined sense of pride about herself, her family, and the North. However, Gendry had heard a song about her – a recently written one, clearly – in the taverns of Mole’s Town a time or two.

_We sing for the Lady of Winterfell_

 _She hath return’d to us through 7 hells_

_She conquer’d a Lion, she saw him to his grave_

 _There hath never been a woman more brave_

_She conquer’d the Riverlands, She conquer’d the Vale_

_She came back to save our dear Winterfell_

_When Bolton did hold it, we suffered in vain_

_But now we are one since winter came_

_Our Lady, Our Lady, we owe you our lives_

 _Our children, our homes, our husbands & wives _

_Oh Lady, Oh Lady, what may we do for your cause?_

_You are our mother forevermore_

Sometimes, when women and children weren’t present, the singers would add an extra verse in the middle.

_Now that nameless bastard deserved what he got_

_His bones now lie broken and left to rot_

_Our Lady was lost but her vengeance was found_

_She fed that dog Ramsay to his own hounds_

Either way, censored or not…it didn’t bode well for Gendry’s prospects of being accepted as a potential suitor for Arya. Legitimized or not, they were never going to approve of him marrying her. That much was obvious.

None of that would make any difference if Arya would even consider marrying him. It was clear that nobody in this world could stop her from doing anything she chose. But that was an even bigger problem. When Gendry tried to picture her in a wedding dress, he couldn’t even see it. He would have laughed at the incongruousness, the impossibility of the image, if it hadn’t represented everything he wanted. He wasn’t sure if Arya even owned a dress at all.

Arya fucking Stark was never going to settle down, never going to be satisfied sitting by the hearth with some man, even a lord – perhaps especially a lord. It was unimaginable. Gendry had never considered himself a clever or wise man, but this was the most extraordinarily stupid thing he’d ever done – fallen head over heels for the most incredible woman, the most incredible PERSON he’d ever encountered in his life. Who neither wanted, needed, nor desired anything from him.

If only he’d kept his stupid mouth shut, maybe she would have stayed.

As soon as that thought flickered through his mind, he knew it was false. No. Regardless of anything he did or didn’t do, Arya would have marched south to kill Cersei. That much was clear as soon as he’d realized she’d gone – it was some relief to know she’d rejected him for a reason she cared deeply about – and Gendry was tallying through his few options.

A) He could race after her as quickly as he could go, even if only to tell her that he was a bloody idiot and he didn’t intend for her to be HIS lady, not like that – he just wanted to be with her as long as they both lived.

B) He could wait for her to come back to Winterfell, after she dispensed of Cersei, which she probably would – if she lived. Gendry was pretty sure nothing could kill Arya at this point, but IF IT DID – could he bear to live in her childhood home, with her bones (if they recovered them) in the crypt below, knowing that he’d never corrected himself or said what he really meant to her?

C) He could march back south to King’s Landing, or to anywhere in the world, and try to forget the most unbelievable, most magical person he’d ever met.

C was impossible. B could work out alright, or could be unbearable. Now that the dawn had broken, and her chambers been found empty, there was only one choice, really. Gendry sighed and headed down to the stable to saddle up his horse.


	2. Not a Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road south is long and Arya has a lot on her mind.

The road south from Winterfell was quiet and sparsely traveled, even now that winter had (thanks to Arya) come to a short end and the frost was starting to melt. Once they left Mole’s Town, there were only scattered houses, taverns, and small villages here and there, all the way to the Riverlands. And The Hound made for about as quiet company as one could hope for. He lumbered along, looking off at the horizon, only occasionally mumbling a cautionary note about the road ahead or the weather looming in the distance.

Usually Arya would be pleased with the silence, but right now it was giving her too much time to think.

Gendry.

How could a man be so beautiful, so loyal, so noble, so brave, so bold, so kind – and so clueless?

She’d thought he knew her better than that, but maybe that was expecting too much considering that it had been years since they first connected, and only a few weeks since they were (by some odd twist of fate) reunited.

To be fair, he’d been drunk, and probably very high on the thrill of being unexpectedly alive after countless hours of fighting a horde of dead men. Still. She’d hoped maybe for a simple hug, an offer of some comfort, some thanks for saving all of their asses, especially his (admittedly very cute one).

Not a proposal. Of the sort she would never want.

Could he even picture her as a lady, managing a castle such as Storm’s End? Had the Long Night made him lose his bloody mind completely?

Did he think she could cook? Or sew? Or know how to hire servants and order them around? There was not one thing that a lady needed to know that Arya had in her skill set. Well, she could mend a leather jerkin with a bit of twine and a broken-off nail, there was that. But she didn’t know how to do anything else other than build a shelter, hunt and trap small animals, build a rough fire in the wild, and roast them over it. All that, she could do – that and kill people efficiently. And survive. But that was it.

What in the 7 hells could he possibly be thinking. Their one night together had affected her deeply, but had it really made him gone this mad?

It had hurt her to say no to him, especially when she saw how sincere his face was. Why had he put her in that position? It was cruel to them both.

Perhaps a bit crueler to him, since he didn’t seem to understand that, unlike the rest of them, her battle was nowhere near finished.

She’d worked through most of her list over the years, or fate had gotten to them before she could, but there was one name that remained, the most important one of all – the one who’d sold Sansa as a slave, the one who’d had her mother and Robb murdered, the one who’d killed her father and her own husband and started this seemingly endless war to begin with – the one who she’d first and most ardently promised to the God of Death, a promise that was long since overdue and time to pay up on.

Cersei. It would have been easier if stupid Danaerys wasn’t impatiently sailing toward King’s Landing at this very moment with the remainder of her army and her dragons, a giant waving flag to Cersei that trouble was coming. Arya could have slipped into the city a lot more easily otherwise, but now it was going to be a lot more dangerous, and all she could focus on was that.

Well…maybe not all she could focus on, clearly. At least as long as this ride south lasted.

She had to admit that, in the part of her that could still be touched by human emotion, it had pained her to see the look on Gendry’s face as he knelt on the hard stone floor of Winterfell and listened to her rejection. He’d been so excited to have something to offer, clearly, or so he thought. Was it fair of her to be angry that he didn’t understand she was much happier when he was a bastard and came with no such baggage?

A castle to run, lands to keep, farms to oversee, militias to maintain, loyal subjects coming to court for resolution of their grievances. Galas and festivals and high holidays to arrange. He’d want a family, children. He’d want stability. The gods knew he’d never had much of it in his life, so she could hardly blame him. But she did. Couldn’t he just want her, wild and free as she was, and not try to pin her to a board like some butterfly he’d caught?

She supposed it was too much to ask, after all.

She shouldn’t have lain with him that night, it seemed, in retrospect, but how was she supposed to know that they all weren’t going to die? She wasn't Bran, knowing all things past and future. She had a little more pity for Jon now, and for everyone she’d ever met who was tangled up hopelessly in some stupid romantic affair that had made them lose their senses. These things were complicated.

The real truth was, when it came to it, she couldn’t give Gendry – whom she cared for deeply, she could be brave enough to admit that to herself, if no one else -- anything to hope for when she was very much unsure that she would ever return from this trip alive.

Her horse was plodding along a bit more slowly now; it had been a long day. Time to rest soon, catch a rabbit or a bird, gather a few herbs and roots, and have a meal. She was just about to grunt as much at the Hound before he arched an eyebrow and cocked his head at her sulky form.

“If you’re going to brood about the fat king’s handsome little bastard this much, you may as well turn around and march on back to Winterfell. Your lady sister’d love nothing more than to plan a spring wedding, you know that much.” He tipped his head back a bit and laughed. “Oh, you in a wedding dress. White! She’ll make you wear wolf furs and all. A tiara! I can see it now. Almost worth missing this bloody war for that.”

“Shut up,” Arya glowered at him. He was lucky her dagger was wrapped in her pack for safekeeping, or she’d have flung it at him. She considered running Needle through him, but she had a use for him, when they got to King’s Landing. Better to be practical.

“I’m just saying,” the Hound continued, as amiable as she’d ever heard him. “The Blacksmith Lord and the Lady Wolf, Slayer of the Night King. They’ll write good sonnets about that one.”

“I’m NOT a lady,” Arya snapped. “Let’s stop. And keep your mouth shut, or I’ll shut it for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just writin’ my fix-it fic like everybody else!


End file.
